Belief, Fear, and Conscience

Abstract

This chapter explores attitudes to excommunication, and in particular attitudes to the idea that excommunicates would go to hell. It argues that while people generally believed in the serious consequences of being excommunicated—there is little to indicate that excommunication and its consequences were rejected in toto—the ever-present ability to seek absolution meant that practical, temporal considerations usually mattered more. Spiritual considerations and emotions were intertwined with worldly goals and desires. Thus people sought absolution with urgency when dying, but not otherwise. The rule that excommunicates should not be buried in ecclesiastical ground was enforced. There is, however, evidence of disquiet felt by those who had incurred excommunications automatically. These people desired absolution even though they had not been judicially or publicly excommunicated. Some excommunicates who remained under sentences did so because they believed that they had been treated unfairly. Conviction in the justice of their causes led them to reject ecclesiastical judgements. The ability to defer absolution until it suited the excommunicate ultimately meant that fear of hell was not the best way to ensure a swift reconciliation with the church.